


It's no better to be safe than sorry

by deirdre_c



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M, Wincest - Freeform, a-ha, take on me, trapped in a comic book
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-23
Updated: 2015-09-23
Packaged: 2018-04-23 01:00:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,373
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4857185
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deirdre_c/pseuds/deirdre_c
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean's trapped inside a comic book, and Sam won't stop until he finds a way to get him out-- a Supernatural take on a-ha's classic "Take On Me" video.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It's no better to be safe than sorry

**Author's Note:**

  * For [petite_madame](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=petite_madame).



> Wonderful art by fiercelynormal.

[ ](http://s37.photobucket.com/user/deirdre_c/media/Safe_zpsizlt1wzb.jpg.html)

Sam can’t look away. But he must, he has to. Has to find some way to fix this.

His fingers fly across the keyboard, searching every place he can think of, every corner of the internet, every .pdf of an antique Grimoire or black magic manuscript that he’s got stashed away on the laptop’s hard drive. But even as he types, he keeps glancing frantically at down at the comic book on the desk beside him. Scanning each new panel to see what’s happening to Dean.

Dean, who’s fighting for his life on the page.

Thirty minutes ago they’d been on a job. Witches. Dean’s least favorite. 

Twenty minutes ago, Dean had found a comic book on the bedside table in the suspect’s room. He’d casually fanned it open and, _whoosh_. Right before Sam’s eyes, before he could make a move, Dean had been sucked into the pages, somehow shrinking and tumbling as if falling head-first down Alice’s rabbit hole. 

Ten minutes ago Sam had been behind the wheel the Impala, driving like a maniac with the comic book spread open in his lap. Images of Dean had appeared—running, shooting, battling—flowing from panel to panel.

And now Sam’s back in their motel room hunting for a solution, watching helplessly as his brother faces down a series of ever-growing dangers. 

Each scene shows Dean overcoming some vicious foe: a poltergeist, a Scarecrow, a black dog. He fights. He wins. Sometimes easily, sometimes not. Then the scene changes. 

Dean’s flying along on a motorcycle in one panel—which Sam might find incredibly sexy if he wasn't in crisis-mode—then grappling with a ghoul in the next.

The images are stylized, sketch-like drawings. All in black and white, Dean himself just a simple set of jagged lines. 

There’s no red for the blood that spatters on the page, but Sam sees it vividly nonetheless.

Sam doesn’t know if this is something happening to Dean elsewhere, and just being documented by the comic, or if Dean’s actually _in_ there. The latter seems more likely—if ‘likely’ even makes sense in this case—because the pictures are moving too fast, changing far more rapidly than could occur in real time.

Dragging his gaze away again, Sam turns back to his search, scanning rapidly through source after source. He stops for a minute, spotting something in a spellbook about a _vita in transmutare art_ , transforming life into art. It’s a struggle to translate the archaic Latin in his panic. But finally, he manages to decipher the spell, only to discover that it gives instructions for getting _into_ the comic—which Dean’s already accomplished—but says nothing about getting back out again. Goddamnit.

There’s got to be more. Something else. _Click. Click. Click._ He keeps searching, but every few seconds peeks back at the comic.

He flips the page. Dean’s cornered now. Shadowy figures close in on him, crawl up the walls around him. Wraiths? Deva? 

It’s something that paints a rare look of desperation across Dean’s face. 

Sam sees Dean try to fire his gun at his pursuers, to no avail. It’s empty, and in the next panel he’s tossing it away.

Then a flicker of movement catches Sam’s eye. It’s almost as if—as if the drawing of Dean actually shifted, moved. Sam does a double take, his already frenzied heartbeat ratcheting up another notch.

This panel is focused tight on Dean’s face and in it he’s looking outward, right at Sam. He peers closer and…there… Dean moved again. His mouth forms Sam’s name. Dean’s calling out for him. 

The shadows in the frame loom closer, they're almost upon him. Dean stretches out a hand, reaching to him. 

Sam’s whirling brain screeches to a halt and he thinks, _fuck it_. He stands, scooping up a random armful of weapons—a shotgun and two pistols, a hand-held flame-thrower and a razor-honed machete—from where Dean had been cleaning them on the room’s second bed the night before. Before he can reconsider, Sam resorts to the only method he’s got. He extends a hand in return toward Dean in the comic and recites the entrance spell out loud. 

The room melts around him and the whole world turns gray. He’s frozen and falling at the same time. He thins, flattens, then suddenly expands to fill a small, square space.

Dean’s there, and Sam automatically tosses him a gun and the knife. He sets his back to Dean’s, the stiff lines of their shirts rustle together like paper. Sam lights the torch, aiming it at the menacing figures that surround them. The flame burns black. His hand that grips it is white. 

The shadows retreat, but Sam gets the sense they’re not defeated, simply retrenching. Dean shoves the pistol in his waistband and grabs Sam by the shoulder, yanking him along to follow.

  
[ ](http://s37.photobucket.com/user/deirdre_c/media/Comic%20Sam%20and%20Dean_zpsjyu6gz4a.jpg.html)   


They run, sprinting, down a long hall. Their bodies blur, and they leave behind a trail of long, thick lines. When they reach a new room, Sam sees that it’s empty, blank.

 _We must be in the next frame,_ Sam thinks, peering around. 

Dean’s leaning on his knees to catch his breath, clutching his ribs on one side with his free hand. He looks up at Sam and grins. “Knew you’d figure this out, Sammy,” he huffs. “So let’s get out of here.”

“Um,” Sam says, “I’m not exactly sure how to do that.” He shrugs apologetically. “The spell I found was a one-way deal.”

“What do you mean?” Dean’s voice rises. “You mean you fucking came in here without an escape route?”

“So, what else was I supposed to do?” Sam retorts hotly. “You were about to be killed!”

“So? So now we’re both stuck.” Dean throws his hands in the air in frustration. 

Sam starts to pace a tiny path. He feels weightless, hollow.

“Go ahead and try the spell that got you here anyway,” Dean suggests.

“No, it’s not —” Sam starts to explain, but then figures, what do they have to lose? “Okay.” 

“Good.” Dean cocks his head to the side like he hears something, and slowly draws his weapon. “But make it snappy.” 

Sam closes his eyes to concentrate on getting the lines right. He carefully reels off the Latin and opens his eyes again to find a large rectangular space has appeared in the wall in front of him. It’s almost like a door, but the surface is a solid black sheet. 

He turns to Dean with a grin. “Success! I think.” Tentatively, he sticks his hand in, anticipating the same kind of tug-and-tumble that brought him here. But this is more like a hole, or an exit. Sam’s arm disappears, but he can pull it back out. They’ll have to walk through. “Come on,” he urges Dean.

“What?” Dean replies, glancing at the wall and back at Sam. “I don’t see anything.”

“Here.” Sam drags Dean by the arm over to the opening. Dean puts his hand up, but unlike Sam’s, it doesn’t penetrate the opening. 

“It’s not working for me, Sammy.” 

“Okay, maybe you need to say the spell yourself. Repeat after me—”

“No time,” Dean growls, looking over Sam’s shoulder. Sam whirls around to see three people at the end of the hall. All three have eyes as black as the door behind him.

Dean gives him a quick sidelong glance. “Try something else,” he says, and suddenly turns to plant both hands on Sam’s chest, shoving him with all his strength. Sam careens backwards, stumbling, plunging right into the black door and through.

Sam finds himself back in the real world, in all its Technicolor, three-dimensional glory. He’s sprawled on the floor under the desk, and hastily he scrambles to his feet, grabbing the comic book and scouring it for the newest panel. 

The demons are still advancing slowly up the hall toward Dean, but clearly Sam only has minutes, seconds even, before they attack.

He buries his head in his hands, thinking furiously. There’s no time for more research. The first spell worked to get Sam back. It can get Dean back. The problem is Dean doesn’t know it. 

_Wait_ , Sam thinks, _maybe I can reverse engineer it? It could work the same, just inverted?_

He grabs a pencil and paper and writes the spell out carefully, trying to deduce the mechanics of it. He’s not a witch, obviously, but the truth is he’s studied enough magic, performed enough spells of his own, that he may be able to figure this out, alter the order, the conditions, channel the power in the opposite direction and…

He doesn’t allow himself to look at the comic. Not once. He focuses his entire attention on rewriting each word of the spell. And at last, when he thinks he has something, something that might work, he speaks it aloud, struggling not to rush and make a mistake.

When the final word is uttered, there’s a loud _bang_ out in the hall. Sam rushes to the motel room door and throws it open. 

Dean’s there, staggering toward him, falling sideways against the wall in pain and exhaustion, but in one piece. His face is shadowed by what might be bruises, but it’s hard to tell.

Because the problem is, he’s still a sketch drawing. 

Sam holds the door open so Dean can hustle inside. He glances up and down the hall to makes sure no one has spotted them. Because seriously, how would they explain away the presence of an illustrated man?

  
[ ](http://s37.photobucket.com/user/deirdre_c/media/Half%20and%20half_zps3jwime5n.jpg.html)   


He quickly shuts the door and turns to find Dean looking down at his hands, flipping them over and back, watching the lines smudge and sharpen with each movement.

“I tried something else,” Sam explains. 

“I can see that.” Dean flops down onto the bed with a groan. The mattress barely dents. “What do we do now, genius?” 

“Well, I’ve bought you some time, time out of danger. Now it’s just a matter of figuring out what the original curse did and how to correct it.” 

But the second the words are out of Sam’s mouth, Dean starts flickering in and out. He jerk-skritches like a weak television signal in a thunderstorm. The whitest areas of him start fading to grey. His sharpest lines start to smear. 

“Oh, shit,” Sam mutters helpfully. 

“Yeah. So much for buying time,” Dean says, standing up again. He holds his arms out to his sides. Sam can almost see through him. “Unfortunately, I’ve got a little Marty McFly problem going on here.”

Fuck, Sam feels like punching the wall. He wants to scream and throw things. But there’s no time for that. He moves toward the desk, knowing it’s futile, yet still hoping maybe he can dig up some kind of a miracle. 

But Dean steps in his way. He slaps his hand down flat on top of the comic. “You’ve gotta salt and burn it, Sam.” 

“What? Are you crazy? That’ll kill you for sure!”

“You don’t know that,” Dean insists. “Fire destroys all kinds of malignant things. It may just release me from this whole cartoon curse. And, to be honest, I don’t think you’re about to pull any other option out of your hat.” 

“No, I can come up with something else. Give me a minute.” But even as he says it, Dean flashes in and out again. It’s like an electrical short, his bulb quickly dimming. 

“I don’t think I’ve got a minute to give,” he says with a soft, rueful smile. “Burn it.” 

“I can’t lose you again, man,” Sam begs, his heart shredding inside his chest. “Especially not to fire,” he adds in a whisper. “Not to fire. I can’t burn you.” 

“You won’t. You’ll save me,” Dean says, pushing the comic toward him urgently. The paper hardly moves. 

Sam rushes forward, tries to take Dean into his arms, but his hands pass right through him. With a choked cry, Sam grabs the comic, fumbles in his duffle for the salt canister and a matchbook, and without looking back, races toward the bathroom. He flings the comic into the tub and douses it with salt. He can scarcely get a match to light, his hands are shaking so fiercely with terror, but he does. The flame bursts to life, and Sam drops it onto the paper below. 

The comic happened to fall open to the page with Dean’s close-up on it, its scribbled lines unmoving now. That’s where the match lands. 

Dean’s face sears and crumples, turning promptly to ash.

Sam can’t move, just braces himself there, frozen solid with dread. He vaguely hopes that the burning comic doesn’t set off the motel’s fire alarm, but he can’t bring himself to douse it. Can’t bring himself to do anything but hold himself perfectly still and listen for any sound from the outer room. 

There’s a soft _thunk_ against the bathroom’s doorframe. Words—“Huh. Looks like I dodged another one”—drift to him in an amused tone. 

Sam turns and practically tackles Dean out of the bathroom and up against the far wall, desperately needing to get his hands on him, on Dean’s solid bulk, his warm skin. Sam presses into him, hands everywhere, owning Dean’s mouth, the taste of him, the smell of him in Sam’s nose, the sleek flesh under his shirt. “Thank god, thank god,” Sam’s chanting in between deep kisses. 

And Dean’s giving as good as he gets, both hands tangled in Sam’s hair to keep him close. 

“Ow,” Dean yelps when Sam clutches bruised ribs too hard.

“Hey, sorry. But you’re okay. You’re okay.” 

“That’s right, man. I am.” 

After that first overwhelming burst of relief, Sam slows, calms. He curls down, tucks his face into the crook of Dean’s neck and takes a few shaky breaths. “Never again, goddammit,” he snuffles. “Never letting you touch _anything_ ever again.” 

“Not anything?” Dean’s hands sweep down Sam’s back, down to cup his ass and squeeze, fingers digging in, kneading at the muscles. He slips a leg in between Sam’s thighs and tugs him closer, and suddenly Sam’s practically humping him. 

“Fuck you,” Sam gripes, but he’s already reaching down between them to start unbuckling Dean’s belt.

“Mmmm. Best idea you’ve had all day.”


End file.
